Crazy Schedule

Crazy Schedule


I work at Community Development Professionals. I have worked there for two years and over the summer was a full time employee. I have many rolls there including general office upkeep, IT, and accounting. Being involved in all of these things makes me an essential member of the CDP organization. With school beginning I knew I had to maximize my time up at school and minimize the time that I worked, otherwise I would become overly stressed and maybe even fall behind in my studies. I had to communicate with my supervisor what my class schedule was and the times I would need to dedicate to school, as well as show her that I was still able to do my job.

This past summer I have taken on more roles at Community Development Professionals, mainly accounting and IT. Being a company of seventeen people payroll now takes a longer time to do. I was in charge of entering in the information into our payroll database and doing the necessary copying. This job generally takes about four hours to do. In conjunction with payroll my second biggest role at CDP is information technology. In most cases I am the one that installs software, set security procedures, set up email accounts, and linking computers together. These two things are very critical parts of the company. If I were not performing my job, payroll would go slower and IT would require a professional so that the other employees would be able to perform their tasks.

When convincing my supervisor I knew that I would have to formulate a logical explanation as to working shorter hours and yet still being able to perform my duties. I would have to prove, in good sense, that they need not higher another employee to carry out my duties. Thankfully she was the mother of a college student.

Having this information I knew that it would be possible to appeal to the idea that her daughter is also a student and so she understands how much time studying can take and that college is to help prepare you for the future. If it is neglected then one is not as readily prepared as one should be for their later years of life. During my senior year of high school I would often talk to her about my struggles in math and she sympathized with me, and so I figured I could yet again go back to the topic of math. When discussing my work hours I brought in my schedule and showed her that I would be taking calculus five days a week and made it clear that I would need a lot of time to focus on this class. I hoped that in providing this information she would be sympathetic this year as she was last year. Several times she had reminded me that if I needed time off in high school to study for tests that I should call off. It didn’t matter that I would lose the money that I would have made for that day. School was top priority so that I would be competitive in the job market.

I had one more thing going for me during this discussion. I had myself. Though that may seem unimportant it was one of the biggest weapons I had in my arsenal. During my two years at the company I have always been early to work and have even stayed late on multiple occasions. When we moved from our rented location to our permanent location I stepped up to the plate. The new building required a lot of painting and construction work before we could move in. I volunteered my spring break to go paint the offices and help with construction so that the moving process would not be delayed. I put in 12 sometimes even 13 hour days at work, half of which was volunteer time so I was not paid for it. Finally move in day came, but it just so happened that this was the same day as prom. Though it was not required of me I went to help move office furniture for four hours and then went home to get ready for prom. My supervisor saw that I was very dedicated to the company through this move.

I was able to take this to the bargaining table. Through my examples of dedication, work ethic, knowledge, and by appealing to her emotions, I was able to prove that I was a valuable member to the company. If someone new were to be hired then they may not have the same work ethic as me or even the knowledge of the company and how certain procedures worked. They would have to be trained from the ground up which would take time and effort. When I explained this to my supervisor and then told her of the hours that I was available to work she agreed. I was able to keep my job working 9 hours a week and then spend the rest of my time on school. We both left the meeting feeling like we had both received something in return. Her, a dedicated and knowledgeable worker, and me with the freedom I needed to go to school and learn.